A Hun Named Attila

Attila Kassay, M.B.A. Harvard, 1957.

Sylvia Plath was a schoolgirl when the Cold War started in 1946. She saw communist Russia pulp Eastern Europe into a featureless "bloc" and rule it with no end in sight. The next generation thought Russians invented communism because no one told us otherwise. In school we saw no educational films about "communist countries" and heard not a peep about their histories or cultures, with one exception: Hungary.

Schools allowed us Hungary in small doses: a folk tale, or "Hungarian dances" as a piano-lesson staple. Americans even tolerated Hungarian TV stars who made fun of themselves: Ernie Kovacs, Zsa Zsa Gabor. Hungary was special. It got a pass. My heritage Eastern European to the core, I sensed this but I had not the tools of reason, and the forces ruling us did not intend to equip us.

But they didn't stop middle-schoolers from ordering selected paperbacks for fifteen cents or a quarter through a service called Junior Scholastic. I bought and read to tatters I Am Fifteen and I Don't Want to Die (1966) a Hungarian girl's World War II survival story, and James Michener's The Bridge at Andau (1957), about the failed 1956 revolution. Hungarians, I learned, were anti-communist homeland patriots. That they were not Slavs but Magyars was in their favor. Russia was Slavic, tainting all other Slavs. We were taught nothing about them except they brainwashed kids to be godless communists. This was our parents' worst nightmare. [1] In Cold War politics the enemy could be anywhere--on your block, in Cuba, in protest songs, in outer space. Only a radical might translate Polish poetry and pester us to read it. I see now that in 1954 Sylvia Plath's choice of Dostoevsky for her thesis topic was a daring one.

Plath's pre-Cold War juvenile diaries show her teachers promoting cultural exchange, which Plath adopted as one of her values. May through July 1945 Plath read three Hungary-themed children's books by author-illustrator Kate Seredy, who wrote The White Stag (1938), a folk tale impressively illustrated with great historical tableaux and the noble deeds and steeds of tribal Huns and Magyars. [2] This cultural exposure, however mild, prepared Sylvia to care or feign care about later events in Hungary.

Westerners thought warmly of Hungary even before the Iron Curtain. Several thousand Hungarian elites after their 1848 war on Austria moved to the United States. Nicknamed "Forty-niners," their refinement made a favorable impression. Another wave post-World War I brought artist Kate Seredy. Hungarian intellectuals in the 1930s fled the Nazis rather than join them. It's a nation's intellectuals and artists who write and sing their history, so we heard about Hungarian exiles' and immigrants' world-class contributions to filmmaking and design, and winning every category of Nobel Prize except for Peace. Communists after World War II seized control of Hungary's universities, purging them of Jews and bourgeoisie. Student Attila Kassay (b. 1928), University of Budapest, was one of them. [4]

A federal student-exchange program in 1949 brokered for Kassay a $425 scholarship to Boston's Northeastern University. It covered a year's tuition. [5] Kassay arrived in April 1950. Through his U.S. senator, Kassay in 1953 was able to apply for permanent residence. [6] He met and dated Sylvia Plath, who got swoony over Continentals with exotic names. [7] He joked that he was King of the Huns and this amused her. She loaned him ten cents so he could buy a comb. (MAYBE THE ISSUE FOR HER WAS THAT ATTILA WAS BROKE?) Four years older than Sylvia, he was worldly, suave, and ready for the long term, but Sylvia was not, wanting mostly "to conquer the cosmopolitan alien before I return to the rustic boy-next-door. Feminine vanity?" (Journals, 145). An Anglophile at heart, she later married Ted Hughes.

Kassay finished his Business Administration degree with honors and in 1957 his Harvard MBA. [8] In 1959 he married Sylvia Coutts. They settled in Worcester, Massachusetts and had four children. Known professionally as corporate vice-president Allan Kassay, he died in 1973, only 45 years old, but his Plath contact has made him as immortal as his name.

[1] They had their reasons. Unlike us they'd witnessed or heard firsthand how communism in practice got people killed.

[2] That fifth-century Huns and ninth-century Magyars together founded Hungary is a medieval legend, popular but false. Huns and Hungary are not related.

[3] Genealogical research shows Plath had Hungarian ancestry through her great-grandmother Barbara Greenwood. In her poem "Daddy," Plath styled Barbara as a "gypsy ancestress," in line with the stereotype of Hungarians as gypsies.

[4] Northeastern's yearbook "The Cauldron," 1955, says Kassay attended too the University of Innsbruck. 

[5] Background from Medalis, Christopher N., "American Cultural Diplomacy: The Fulbright Programs in U.S.-Hungarian Higher Education," diss. Columbia University, 2009. $425 in 1950 funded one year of full-time tuition at Northeastern. Kassay did hold student co-op jobs.

[6] The Refugee Relief Act of 1953 was specifically for refugees from communist countries. Kassay's request is in the Congressional Record, U.S. Senate 13 April 1953, page 2964, "Bills Introduced by Mr. Saltonstall."

[7] Plath also had fantasies about Polish males, embarrassing even to read.

[8] Boston Globe, 13 June 1957, p. 16. 

Only Perfection Will Do

For Aurelia Plath only perfection would do -- her ideas of perfection. Which were others' ideas of perfection. These overwhelmed her. Where Aurelia had control, she fixed matters, wary of what other people might think and say. She took criticism very personally, dreading it, warding it off. Sylvia when criticized got furious. No one would so fear criticism unless there were real and painful penalties for falling short of expectations. 

Was Aurelia a born conformist? No. She had pranced around onstage in men's clothes. She had a premarital sexual affair with a man her father's age. She dated a married man and in sinful Nevada lied that she lived there, and after his instant divorce instantly married him. Wife of a Jekyll-and-Hyde, Aurelia became hypervigilant and learned subterfuge and shutting up. And the longer Aurelia lived the more chance of criticism, because standards for womanhood and motherhood rose so eye-wateringly high, and kept rising, that criticism tipped over into judgement.

Judgement: deciding who a person is, based on one trait or incident. Such as a hairdo.

The above portrait of Sylvia is her lovely college graduation photo, signed by photographer Eric Stahlberg, taken in Northampton, 1955. He retouched the photo's glass negative, covering Sylvia's facial scar and the bobby pin that anchored her wave. Not so you'd notice.

It wasn't perfect enough. I have it on good authority, plus photos, that like many (most?) midcentury women, Aurelia was very conscious of the look of her hair. Everybody knew that hair is a woman's crowning glory -- Plath's portrait is all about her hair -- and if it's neat and tamed so is the woman, and if it's been coifed, she's a somebody. And ideally women had curls or at least a wave. And was blond. That was a lot to ask, but for this milestone photo, Sylvia or Aurelia or both cared enough to want it all.

Aurelia reproduced her personal print of the photo in Letters Home. I took a photo of it good enough (above) to show that the split ends at the back of Sylvia's head had been painted out. Enlargement showed beneath the bobby pin words in cursive, hard to read. Those must have been drawn on the negative after printing the print sold by Sotheby's.

When greatly enlarged (and the image flipped vertically, not shown) I saw on the retouched version, between the set of short lines pointing upward and downward, the words "Retouch marcel."

Close-up at Sylvia's temple: Can you see the writing?

It isn't clear whether Aurelia or Sylvia ordered this done. Both were perfectionists, and I can't tell you how much women of the time -- and later -- aspired to perfect immunity from criticism by those they knew, and feared judgement by those they didn't. Meanwhile mother and daughter spoke snidely of others and were super-critical of themselves. 

Sure, retouch the flyaway strands. Yet the request was to widen and deepen the wave or "marcel" in Sylvia's hair, so brightly studio-lit one can't tell if she was blond  or brunet. I always thought -- maybe you did too -- this photo showed her blond. But then why darken the bottom of the hairdo, thickly repainting it a cloudy black, obscuring individual strands? Compared to Stahlberg's print, the book version's higher contrast and taming create almost a zebra effect.

This must have satisfied, or Aurelia wouldn't have reprinted the photo.

"Sylvia Died Yesterday"

"Sylvia died yesterday," said the cablegram from Ted Hughes to Sylvia Plath's aunt Dorothy on 12 February 1963. Dorothy called Sylvia's brother Warren. The pink page above is Aurelia Plath's carbon copy of "Last Commentary," written in 1974, describing how she learned about Sylvia's death. Aurelia wanted this published in Letters Home. Her editor reduced it to its first sentence.

Aurelia's is the only report of this event. It's in the Sylvia Plath archive at Smith College. The complete page, with its handwritten annotations, says:

(Last Commentary)

[[in black ink]] -- as it really was 

[[in pencil, upper right corner]] from Final Account Folder 6/7/74 

On February 12, 1963, my sister received a cablegram from Ted, stating, "Sylvia died yesterday," and giving time and place of funeral. No mention of the cause of death or of the whereabouts and condition of the children!

When I came home, later than usual, for I had stopped to have a hair shampoo and set after I had left Boston University, I saw Warren's car parked outside of my house. Thinking they had come for a surprise visit, I dashed joyously into the house, greeting both Warren and Margaret happily. They were very quiet, I noticed. We sat down in the living room and exchanged a few inconsequential remarks. Then I became aware of the tense atmosphere, the constraint evident in each of them. "You've come to break bad news to me," I then said, giving them the opening they were seeking. They told me of the cablegram Dorothy had received that morning. "The children," was my first cry. "What of the children!"

"Margaret called the British Consul in Boston, and we have learned they are alive and being cared for," Warren assured me. Then he told me he and Margaret were planning to go to England immediately. I wanted the children to be in our joint care. They promised they would do all they could to achieve this arrangement, urging me not to join them, persuading me that my presence might make such arrangements more difficult. My minister, the late Reverend William Brooks Rice, agreed with Warren and Margaret. [[added in blue ink]] so did my physician, Dr. Robert Brownlee. 

That's Aurelia's story. [1] In real life she was probably stunned and sickened to hear that her daughter was dead and guessed at once that it was suicide. Aurelia likely raved about Ted's cowardice in routing the shocking news through Dorothy and not naming any cause. I bet she argued long with Warren before conceding that she should not go to England. And in this account she proper-named her minister and doctor, I think to quash readers' suspicions that they weren't consulted.

Like all of Aurelia's elaborations this account is defensive. She wanted readers to know that titled authorities approved of her skipping the funeral, lest readers think she didn't go because she didn't care. The shampoo-and-set excuse backs Aurelia's claim that she was habitually home from work by 3 p.m. to greet Sylvia and Warren after school, not an "absent parent." Had the "bring the children to America" plan come through, instead of seizing and smothering the kids Aurelia would have nicely co-parented with Warren and Margaret.

The text seems to suggest that concern for her grandkids eclipsed her concern for her daughter, but by 1974 Aurelia knew better than to write about Sylvia's death: Ted would edit it out. Aurelia, aware of every dirty detail, had to keep silent or he'd deny her visits with the kids. And Ted sure didn't want us to know he'd burdened Dorothy and Warren with breaking the news -- although if I were Dorothy I'd probably have tried phoning Aurelia first. What Aurelia wanted publicly known is that she put the children's welfare above all.

Most of Aurelia's 1960s journals, or those that survive, convey much the same, recording only her annual visits with Frieda and Nick. She once called the children "pieces of Sylvia." That sounds awful, but for Aurelia the children were more than that. They were vessels for Aurelia's love, which Aurelia expected to be returned. It wasn't. She believed, or pretended to believe, in her century's campaign to persuade women that families were bound by love and members ought to love each other: the spiritual equivalent of painting little red hearts on everything. 

[1] AureliaPlath.info followers already know how to read Aurelia's anecdotes. If you don't, please see "It's Aurelia's Story and She's Sticking To It," Aureliaplath.info, 11 February 2025.

Sylvia Plath's Despair: It's Academic

Eighteen-year-old Sylvia Plath had written her mother Aurelia about exhaustion, sleeplessness and thoughts of suicide during her first semester at Smith College. On Sunday 10 December 1950 she wrote her mother about a fellow freshman who was suicidal over the college's academic demands. Reading between the lines, Aurelia wrote, in Gregg shorthand, on that letter's envelope:

Go to Dr. Booth Sylvia should go with her. If she wants they can should see Dr. Booth Tuesday. Girl will then be brought analyzed in one another presence. 

Aurelia, clearly rattled, seemed to misunderstand psychiatric treatment, yet wasn't ignorant or cold regarding Sylvia's depressions and was sharply aware that Sylvia needed something like analysis. Sylvia's previous letter (7 December 1950) had signaled Aurelia with triggering words:

. . . hoping that I can make it to Xmas vacation without going completely insane -- you know that sort of morbid depression I sink into. . . 

Whether the girls met with Dr. Booth, the college's psychiatrist, I don't know, but not 24 hours after writing the December 10 letter Sylvia wrote Aurelia that her friend seemed much better.

Getting all "A" grades was a distinction Sylvia wanted whatever its price. As a scholarship student, she only worked harder. Aurelia later told psychiatrists and journalists that overwork -- and not sexual matters -- had driven Sylvia to a breakdown. Academics were a double-digit percentage of Sylvia's trouble in summer 1953. In Sylvia's journal, October 1951, her sophomore year, Sylvia had written:

But worst of all I have this terrible responsibility of being an A-student. . . and I don't see how I can keep up my front. [1]

The tripwire for Sylvia's suicide attempt was academic: being denied admission to Frank O'Connor's writing course at Harvard. Sylvia tried killing herself in late August, the timing suggesting she dreaded returning to Smith for an extra-demanding senior year requiring an honors thesis about a novel, Finnegan's Wake, she hadn't yet read, and comprehensive English-lit exams she wasn't prepared for. [2] Which was her own fault. Esther Greenwood says:

I'd skipped [a course in eighteenth-century literature]. . . . They let you do that in honors, you were much freer. I'd been so free I'd spent most of my time on Dylan Thomas.  (TBJ, 139) 

She might even fail those exams. Or score less than brilliantly and not get a summa cum laude to go with her Phi Beta Kappa and college writing prizes, and so on.

Sylvia spent the fall '53 semester in mental hospitals and had electroshock treatments until in December she suddenly felt much better. In 1959 she pondered:

Why, after the 'amazingly short' three or so shock treatments did I rocket uphill? [3]

Sylvia wrote that the few treatments felt like sufficient "punishment." She doesn't say that if she claimed to be healed she could return to college for a gently scheduled extra semester to correct her path toward a triumphant senior year.

[1] Journal Fragment 17-19 October 1951, Journals.

[2] In the 1950s through the '60s, James Joyce was every English department's darling. Joyce scholars were the giants of the discipline (and acted the part). Sylvia wanted to be counted among them. Realizing she might not succeed, she chose another topic.

[3] "Therapy Notes," 3 January 1959, Journals.